My friend Kailani (link to blog on the side bar) is working toward her dream of traveling the world for a year (by plane, train, and pack mule) and a recent blog of hers got me thinking about what it takes to passionately follow the dreams in our hearts.
As children, anything seems possible. I remember watching Mary Lou Retton win the Gold Medal in gymnastics and thinking (with absolutely no regard to my staggering lack of coordination) that I too would be a gold medalist, but not just in gynastics. I would medal in figure skating too. And I would do that while writing stories and performing concerts where I would sing, play the piano, and play the violin. And in my spare time I would race horses and live in a castle and keep a pet dragon that I took out for night flights to burst through the curtain between this world and that of the faeries who would, of course, crown me their long-lost Queen. And when I was done with that, I would go to college, get married, have children, bake Christmas cookies, and maybe travel overseas every few weeks.
Of course, my staggering lack of coordination prevented me from competing in the Olympics (although I'm still holding out for Power Shopping) and I don't yet know how to play the violin. I've never raced a horse (and after being rudely kicked in the head by the last one I approached, I don't think I really want to after all) or lived in a castle (though I'm still young, that can happen) or kept a pet dragon. I am, of course, the secret Queen of the faeries but you didn't hear it from me.
What happens to our delicious sense of adventure and daring as we grow up? Why do we slowly cast aside all the dreams that used to sparkle for us until we are left trudging the same well-worn rut of everyone around us? Graduate from high school. Get a job. Or go to college, graduate, then get a job. Hopefully it's one you like but better just take what you can get rather than hold out for what you really want because who gets that?
It's like our lives become cluttered with traffic signs: Stop - that isn't practical. Merge - everyone says you need to go this way. Dead End - just forget about the road less traveled. Speed Limit - keep it safe and steady.
What if we looked into our hearts and identified our dreams? The ones that still sparkle if we dust them off. The ones that still make hearts race with possibilities. What if we decided to breathe life into our dreams and ignore the traffic laws littering our adult world?
What if we didn't stop but found a way to mix the practicality of paying bills with the passionate pursuit of an impractical dream? What if we stopped merging and said, God has called me to go this way and off I go? What if we didn't see a dead end but saw endless possibilites in uncharted waters instead?
What if we valued risk over safety?
I will never be an Olympic medalist (unless that blasted committee finally approves my Power Shopping petition). I won't be a jockey. I won't be a concert pianist either. But that's okay because the deeper dreams of my heart are alive and growing. I will not come to the end of my life and regret the path I took to get there. Better to live a life of spectacular, beautiful failures on the way to seeing a dream come true than to huddle in safety, never stretching myself to discover what I can really be.
Monday, December 10, 2007
Saturday, December 8, 2007
My Reading Checklist
I recently finished reading a book that I really, really wanted to like. It was the first novel for this author but he is involved in the composing and production side of the music industry here in Nashville and since I'm a fan of his creativity there, I figured I'd be a fan of his written creativity too.
My problem was that he "pinged" every item on my reading checklist - a sort of mental standard of what I can't stand in a novel. He made me laugh outloud on page three and again on page four and it wasn't because he was trying to be funny - it was me laughing in disbelief that his editor let him get away with this stuff.
Here are a few of my pet peeves while reading:
1. Starting a paragraph by clearly denoting which character is speaking or doing and then feeling the need to remind me halfway through the paragraph of that character's name again. i.e. "Ashley raced to pick up the phone. It was a wrong number. She put the phone back into its cradle. Ashley wondered why someone kept calling her and hanging up."
See? I know it's Ashley, right from the start. I don't need a reminder halfway through that "she" refers back to Ashley because since I'm still young enough to have most of my mental capabilities roaring along at full capacity, I'm unlikely to forget what I've just read. Whenever I see this in a novel, it screams "Amateur" to me and I wonder how their editor missed it.
2. Giving a character technical information they wouldn't logically own. In the book I just read, the main character starts out on an airplane. Extreme turbulence causes an overhead bin to fly open and an older man is injured. The main character rushes to his aid and when a flight attendant asks why he needs a flashlight to check for a concussion (perhaps because she's been living in a cave up until now and doesn't possess the knowledge the rest of the population has about dialated pupils and head injuries?), the character gives this long and involved explanation about brain tissue swelling and uses several technical medical terms.
Okay, I'm thinking, our MC must be a dr, right? The flight attendant is in agreement with me and asks our MC the same thing. He says, "No" and I'm waited for the "But I play one on tv" punchline that never comes. At this point, the author gets an eye roll from me and it's only page three. Not good.
3. Making a character do something so completely unrealistic that it yanks me out of the flow of the book. In this book, when our MC rushes to the aid of the gentleman two rows up who's been struck by a suitcase (and I was already sitting there wondering if plain old turbulence could really fling a suitcase out of an overhead compartment...), he does it by crawling over the seat in front of him, stepping on the man hunkered down with his head between his knees, and then leaping into the aisle. Who does that?? Answer - nobody. It's just plain unrealistic. He could have slipped past the slender, attractive woman seated next to him and gone down the aisle like any sane, normal person would have done.
4. Using unrealistic dialogue. This was the kicker. I'd already had Superman leaping over airplane chairs, an MC with no medical training but who somehow managed to sound like a medical textbook, turbulence and injuries that, upon further reading, added nothing more to the plot than the opportunity for said MC to demonstrate his remarkable chair leaping skills, and now I had dialoge ripped straight from an early days Harlequin and somehow coming out of the mouth of a professional woman.
Here's what set me off: Our MC returns to his seat, quite the airline hero, and the woman next to him strikes up a conversation. She immediately gains the knowledge that he has a son and she says (and I'm quoting here), "I bet he gets his casual good looks from you."
I nearly choked, I laughed so hard. He gets his casual good looks from you??? No one, and I do mean no one, talks like that in real life.
5. Using cliched ideas or mimicking a popular literary work too closely. This book, despite the above mentioned amateur blunders, had a very interesting premise...sort of like National Treasure and the Da Vinci Code combined. Except the more I read, the further toward Da Vinci Code it leaned until near the end, the characters are speculating that the huge secret hidden in the illustrations of priceless old Bibles is that the God of the Jews was a woman. Even though it turned out they were wrong and the secret was something totally different, I was very turned off by this because it so strongly echoed the premise in DVC. I'm a big fan of taking an idea and pushing it until it looks like nothing else you've read. =)
So, yes, I was disappointed in this book overall and most authors who pinged all five of my pet peeves would have had their book given to Goodwill unfinished by me. =)
My problem was that he "pinged" every item on my reading checklist - a sort of mental standard of what I can't stand in a novel. He made me laugh outloud on page three and again on page four and it wasn't because he was trying to be funny - it was me laughing in disbelief that his editor let him get away with this stuff.
Here are a few of my pet peeves while reading:
1. Starting a paragraph by clearly denoting which character is speaking or doing and then feeling the need to remind me halfway through the paragraph of that character's name again. i.e. "Ashley raced to pick up the phone. It was a wrong number. She put the phone back into its cradle. Ashley wondered why someone kept calling her and hanging up."
See? I know it's Ashley, right from the start. I don't need a reminder halfway through that "she" refers back to Ashley because since I'm still young enough to have most of my mental capabilities roaring along at full capacity, I'm unlikely to forget what I've just read. Whenever I see this in a novel, it screams "Amateur" to me and I wonder how their editor missed it.
2. Giving a character technical information they wouldn't logically own. In the book I just read, the main character starts out on an airplane. Extreme turbulence causes an overhead bin to fly open and an older man is injured. The main character rushes to his aid and when a flight attendant asks why he needs a flashlight to check for a concussion (perhaps because she's been living in a cave up until now and doesn't possess the knowledge the rest of the population has about dialated pupils and head injuries?), the character gives this long and involved explanation about brain tissue swelling and uses several technical medical terms.
Okay, I'm thinking, our MC must be a dr, right? The flight attendant is in agreement with me and asks our MC the same thing. He says, "No" and I'm waited for the "But I play one on tv" punchline that never comes. At this point, the author gets an eye roll from me and it's only page three. Not good.
3. Making a character do something so completely unrealistic that it yanks me out of the flow of the book. In this book, when our MC rushes to the aid of the gentleman two rows up who's been struck by a suitcase (and I was already sitting there wondering if plain old turbulence could really fling a suitcase out of an overhead compartment...), he does it by crawling over the seat in front of him, stepping on the man hunkered down with his head between his knees, and then leaping into the aisle. Who does that?? Answer - nobody. It's just plain unrealistic. He could have slipped past the slender, attractive woman seated next to him and gone down the aisle like any sane, normal person would have done.
4. Using unrealistic dialogue. This was the kicker. I'd already had Superman leaping over airplane chairs, an MC with no medical training but who somehow managed to sound like a medical textbook, turbulence and injuries that, upon further reading, added nothing more to the plot than the opportunity for said MC to demonstrate his remarkable chair leaping skills, and now I had dialoge ripped straight from an early days Harlequin and somehow coming out of the mouth of a professional woman.
Here's what set me off: Our MC returns to his seat, quite the airline hero, and the woman next to him strikes up a conversation. She immediately gains the knowledge that he has a son and she says (and I'm quoting here), "I bet he gets his casual good looks from you."
I nearly choked, I laughed so hard. He gets his casual good looks from you??? No one, and I do mean no one, talks like that in real life.
5. Using cliched ideas or mimicking a popular literary work too closely. This book, despite the above mentioned amateur blunders, had a very interesting premise...sort of like National Treasure and the Da Vinci Code combined. Except the more I read, the further toward Da Vinci Code it leaned until near the end, the characters are speculating that the huge secret hidden in the illustrations of priceless old Bibles is that the God of the Jews was a woman. Even though it turned out they were wrong and the secret was something totally different, I was very turned off by this because it so strongly echoed the premise in DVC. I'm a big fan of taking an idea and pushing it until it looks like nothing else you've read. =)
So, yes, I was disappointed in this book overall and most authors who pinged all five of my pet peeves would have had their book given to Goodwill unfinished by me. =)
Friday, December 7, 2007
Thursday, December 6, 2007
It's Like Caffeine - On Steroids
Reasons why I shouldn't drink caffeine:
1. My hands shake.
2. It goes straight to the part of my brain whose sole function it is to control rational thought processes.
3. I tend to find everything extremely funny. I do mean everything.
4. I give new meaning to the term "motor-mouth".
Reasons why I shouldn't drink caffeine right after taking an energy-inducing steroid:
1. Forget my hands shaking - my whole body vibrates like a tuning fork.
2. Rational thought processes, like volume control and the ability to blink without developing an unsightly twitch, fly right out the window.
3. People find me extremely funny. Or terrifying, depending on their tolerance for the wierd.
4. Motor-mouth morphs into the equivalent of OhandIjustthoughtofonemorethingtosaybutthenitflewoutmybrainjustlikethatbecausewowI'mfeelinghyperandthatcan'tbeagoodthingbutthenagainmaybeitisandWOOOOOOOOO.
10 pts. if you can dicipher that last sentence.
50 pts if you were within range Tuesday night and experienced it in person.
100 pts if you said WOOOOOOO back at me. =)
1. My hands shake.
2. It goes straight to the part of my brain whose sole function it is to control rational thought processes.
3. I tend to find everything extremely funny. I do mean everything.
4. I give new meaning to the term "motor-mouth".
Reasons why I shouldn't drink caffeine right after taking an energy-inducing steroid:
1. Forget my hands shaking - my whole body vibrates like a tuning fork.
2. Rational thought processes, like volume control and the ability to blink without developing an unsightly twitch, fly right out the window.
3. People find me extremely funny. Or terrifying, depending on their tolerance for the wierd.
4. Motor-mouth morphs into the equivalent of OhandIjustthoughtofonemorethingtosaybutthenitflewoutmybrainjustlikethatbecausewowI'mfeelinghyperandthatcan'tbeagoodthingbutthenagainmaybeitisandWOOOOOOOOO.
10 pts. if you can dicipher that last sentence.
50 pts if you were within range Tuesday night and experienced it in person.
100 pts if you said WOOOOOOO back at me. =)
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
Random Wednesday List
Just because:
1. Paul made me snort a crumb of pumpkin bread (okay, it's a possibility that I just need more practice swallowing but he's a handy target. I blame him) and I have to say that having a crumb of anything lodged firmly in one's sinus cavity is most uncomfortable.
2. I really love the movie Unleashed starring Jet Li.
3. We now have six foot tall penguins on a sled in our yard. It's considered cute.
4. Our Christmas tree is beautiful.
5. I tried turnip greens (for those of you who don't live in the South, that's kind of like cooked spinach with bacon in it) and I surprised myself by enjoying them.
6. Still won't touch okra though.
7. My dog is one big lazy baby. He even lays down to eat his food.
8. There should be a mandatory age cut off for yanking driver's licenses. Like, before age 90.
9. I'm getting stocking stuffers for the kids tonight. =)
10. My mom was once treed by a herd of pigs when she was a child.
11. I've never been treed by anything but I've been spit on by a llama, kicked in the head by a horse, and knocked over by a sheep. A really fat sheep.
12. I don't actually care for barnyard animals up close.
13. Bumper cars would be so much more fun if you could actually speed up before you rammed someone.
14. Daredevil was listening to one of the cds my hubby and I got a decade ago (Supertones) and singing along in his room. It was fun to listen to.
15. I really love every single Christmas-scented candle I've come across.
16. My birthday arrives in a month and three days, followed by Starshine's five days later.
17. I really really love the color red.
18. Not so big on purple though. Or chartruese. Or puce. Puce. Even the name sounds frightfully unattractive.
19. I've become known at work as the girl who can instantly come up with vividly creative death threats.
20. Contrary to some people's opinions, this does not make me psycho. It validates my wide streak of creativity and my lightning fast, never-really-silent mouth.
1. Paul made me snort a crumb of pumpkin bread (okay, it's a possibility that I just need more practice swallowing but he's a handy target. I blame him) and I have to say that having a crumb of anything lodged firmly in one's sinus cavity is most uncomfortable.
2. I really love the movie Unleashed starring Jet Li.
3. We now have six foot tall penguins on a sled in our yard. It's considered cute.
4. Our Christmas tree is beautiful.
5. I tried turnip greens (for those of you who don't live in the South, that's kind of like cooked spinach with bacon in it) and I surprised myself by enjoying them.
6. Still won't touch okra though.
7. My dog is one big lazy baby. He even lays down to eat his food.
8. There should be a mandatory age cut off for yanking driver's licenses. Like, before age 90.
9. I'm getting stocking stuffers for the kids tonight. =)
10. My mom was once treed by a herd of pigs when she was a child.
11. I've never been treed by anything but I've been spit on by a llama, kicked in the head by a horse, and knocked over by a sheep. A really fat sheep.
12. I don't actually care for barnyard animals up close.
13. Bumper cars would be so much more fun if you could actually speed up before you rammed someone.
14. Daredevil was listening to one of the cds my hubby and I got a decade ago (Supertones) and singing along in his room. It was fun to listen to.
15. I really love every single Christmas-scented candle I've come across.
16. My birthday arrives in a month and three days, followed by Starshine's five days later.
17. I really really love the color red.
18. Not so big on purple though. Or chartruese. Or puce. Puce. Even the name sounds frightfully unattractive.
19. I've become known at work as the girl who can instantly come up with vividly creative death threats.
20. Contrary to some people's opinions, this does not make me psycho. It validates my wide streak of creativity and my lightning fast, never-really-silent mouth.
December 1982
I'm wearing my pajamas, the fuzzy red sleeper-blanket with glittery snow flakes across the front and a hole worn through the heel of the left foot. I'm curled into my window seat, nose pressed against the glass, watching the condensation from my breath fog the window in a rhythmic circle.
I'm supposed to be in bed.
But it's Christmas Eve and I can't sleep. Not yet. We've opened one present already, like we always do. One small gift to tide us over to the wonder and sparkle of Christmas morning.
I got a set of Nancy Drew books, hardback. I'm relieved my mom didn't pull out the soft, squishy package with my name on it. I found it while rummaging through the brightly wrapped gifts and stuffed it to the back of the tree. I'm pretty sure it's underwear.
My books are lined up neatly on my desk but I don't look at them now. My lights are off and the house is settling for the night, though I can still hear Christmas music drifting down the hall from the living room and my Dad's reel to reel tape. Hours and hours of Christmas music are captured on those tapes. I love to watch the glossy chocolate ribbon roll slowly from one silvery disk to the other while the Nutcracker or Karen Carpenter or Boston Pops fills the air.
I strain to recognize the song playing now. White Christmas.
I smile and look out the window again. It is a white Christmas, here in Oregon. The snow swirled down today, deceptively slow, coating the bleak expanse of dead grass and bare trees with icy brilliance. Our Christmas lights, a single string of large bulbs in blue, red, green, and orange, blink steadily across the line of our roof and I watch their reflection wavering in the glittery snow heaped beneath my window.
I am waiting.
We are a family that has never believed in Santa Claus. He is a fun story, part of the Christmas time lore and legend, but we don't put out cookies. We don't get presents from Santa. And we don't worry about lighting fires in our fireplace.
I sit up straighter, looking around the aerosol-sprayed snow-from-a-can letters on the inside of my window. "Christmas", it says. My sister's room next door says "Merry". I stare at the sky with nearly unblinking vigilance.
White Christmas fades and something else takes its place but I am not listening. Not anymore. I'm straining to hear bells and far off sounds of something magical sliding through the winter night.
The stars seem brilliant tonight, sharply cut into the frozen sky. It isn't hard to imagine a sleigh and some reindeer darting among them, carrying joy and mystery and hope.
I don't believe in Santa. But still I watch. And I listen. And I wonder. Because I do believe in hope.
I'm supposed to be in bed.
But it's Christmas Eve and I can't sleep. Not yet. We've opened one present already, like we always do. One small gift to tide us over to the wonder and sparkle of Christmas morning.
I got a set of Nancy Drew books, hardback. I'm relieved my mom didn't pull out the soft, squishy package with my name on it. I found it while rummaging through the brightly wrapped gifts and stuffed it to the back of the tree. I'm pretty sure it's underwear.
My books are lined up neatly on my desk but I don't look at them now. My lights are off and the house is settling for the night, though I can still hear Christmas music drifting down the hall from the living room and my Dad's reel to reel tape. Hours and hours of Christmas music are captured on those tapes. I love to watch the glossy chocolate ribbon roll slowly from one silvery disk to the other while the Nutcracker or Karen Carpenter or Boston Pops fills the air.
I strain to recognize the song playing now. White Christmas.
I smile and look out the window again. It is a white Christmas, here in Oregon. The snow swirled down today, deceptively slow, coating the bleak expanse of dead grass and bare trees with icy brilliance. Our Christmas lights, a single string of large bulbs in blue, red, green, and orange, blink steadily across the line of our roof and I watch their reflection wavering in the glittery snow heaped beneath my window.
I am waiting.
We are a family that has never believed in Santa Claus. He is a fun story, part of the Christmas time lore and legend, but we don't put out cookies. We don't get presents from Santa. And we don't worry about lighting fires in our fireplace.
I sit up straighter, looking around the aerosol-sprayed snow-from-a-can letters on the inside of my window. "Christmas", it says. My sister's room next door says "Merry". I stare at the sky with nearly unblinking vigilance.
White Christmas fades and something else takes its place but I am not listening. Not anymore. I'm straining to hear bells and far off sounds of something magical sliding through the winter night.
The stars seem brilliant tonight, sharply cut into the frozen sky. It isn't hard to imagine a sleigh and some reindeer darting among them, carrying joy and mystery and hope.
I don't believe in Santa. But still I watch. And I listen. And I wonder. Because I do believe in hope.
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